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The Cost of Living Blues

Last year, on Feb. 10, in the kind of pronouncement that has become all too familiar, Richard Kramer, the chairman and C.E.O. of Goodyear Tire & Rubber, announced the closing of a plant in Union City, Tenn:

While we are committed to manufacturing in North America, all of our plants must be cost-competitive and be able to demonstrate sustainable, world-class productivity. That is not the case with this plant, and as a result, the market has moved beyond what the factory is able to build.

The actual shutdown took place on July 10, 2011, when 1,983 workers lost their jobs. The last item posted on the web site of Union City Steelworkers Local 878L, which represented the workers at the plant, reads:

Attention USW Local 878L Members

At 11:00 pm CDT last night (07/10/2011), our Sisters and Brothers at Local 878L in Union City, TN, were given WARN notice and told by Goodyear that their services were no longer needed.

Everything to know about me
Is written on this page
The number you can reach me
My social and my age
Yes I served in the army
It’s where I learned to shoot
Eighteen months in the desert
Pourin’ sand out of my boots
No I’ve never been convicted of a crime
I could start this job at any time.

(Chorus)

I got a strong back
Steel toes
I’m handy with a wrench
There’s nothing I can’t drive
Nothing I can’t fix
I work sun-up to sun-down
Ain’t too proud to sweep the floors
Bank has started calling
And the wolves are at my door
Three dollars and change at the pump
Cost of livin’s high and goin’ up.

I put Robert down as a reference
He’s known me all my life
We attend the same church
He introduced me to my wife
Gave my last job everything
Before it headed south
Took the shoes off of my children’s feet
The food out of their mouths
Yesterday my folks offered to help
But they’re barely getting by themselves

(Chorus)

I got a strong back…

I’m sure a hundred others have applied
Rumor has it you’re only takin’ five

(Chorus)

Ronnie Dunn, it turns out, is part of that rare but potentially crucial segment of the electorate, the man on the fence.

In 2004, Dunn was one of the most outspoken supporters of President George W. Bush’s re-election. “The major reason of me being overboard with Bush was the terrorist attacks. Bush stepped up,” Dunn told me in a phone interview from Santa Fe.

Since then, Dunn has shifted gears.

“It’ll kill me,” he said, referring to the likely angry response from his country and western fans, many of whom have abandoned the Democratic Party, but in 2008, Dunn says, he voted for Obama.

“I was initially attracted to Obama’s charisma,” he said. “Now I would say charisma does not an effective leader make.”

When Dunn and Coleman put together the documentary-style music video for “Cost of Livin,’ ” they interviewed laid-off workers near the closed Goodyear plant in Obion County, Tenn., where Coleman grew up. The men and women in the film are worried about what will come next. In the film, their faces and voices are interspersed with the song’s verses:

“My name’s Toni Bryant, I’ve been working at the tire plant for 13 years and today is my last day.” She smiles. “Cleaned out my locker, throwed out those steel-toed shoes.”

An unidentified middle-aged man with a baseball cap sitting on his front porch with his wife and daughter says: “Went to work that day, and there it was. They were closing the plant.” He pauses and looks at the camera. “Scared. Think about your kids, what are they going to do? What are we going to do?”

The video is testament to the depth of the trauma inflicted on millions across the country who are out of work. It is, coincidentally, strikingly similar to the ads attacking Romney and Bain Capital that have been put together by the Obama campaign and its allied super PAC, Priorities USA Action.

There are high hurdles for Democrats trying to make the case for Obama in Obion County where the unemployment rate has risen over the past year from 10.6 percent to 14.8 percent. The sense of betrayal and grievance in the county is echoed in states key to the election – Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire.

The past four years have been hard on voters across the nation. This chart from the Pew Research Center documents the sharp decline in median household income since 2008, and an even worse drop in median net worth, which plummeted 39 percent — from $152,950 in 2008 to $93,150 last year.

Obviously, these are not good figures for an incumbent president seeking re-election:

Unemployment, the most direct measure of the human cost of a weak economy, remains high, at 8.3 percent. Just under 12.8 million men and women are out of work. 5.2 million of them have been without a job for six months or longer. Another 5.3 million people want to work full time but can only find part-time jobs, and 852,000 have given up looking for a job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In all its forms, worklessness breeds financial insecurity, family strife, downward mobility and a pervasive sense of anguish. Those with jobs sense the precariousness of their livelihoods.

Voters in a Pew survey released on Aug. 22 place more of the responsibility for the nation’s economic problems on Congress, on financial institutions, on corporations, on the Bush administration and on foreign competition than they do on the Obama administration:

The central goal of the Romney campaign over the next nine weeks will be to try to shift more of the blame, by any means necessary, to Obama.

When Dunn and Coleman were finishing work on “Cost of Livin,’ ” both men were convinced they had a hit on their hands. “It’s just one of those rare cases where it’s an honest account of an issue going on in real time,” Dunn told me.

Music industry executives were surprised when “Cost of Livin’ ” stalled at number 19 on the billboard charts last November. No song, they thought, could have been more topical. In a lengthy examination of the sales history of “Cost of Livin,’ ” Pierce Greenberg of the Nashville City Paper raised the question: “Is the country radio climate still conducive to a strong, realistic representation of American struggles? Or has the notion of ‘feel-good’ songs hampered a core principle of country music’s past?”

Dunn may be on the fence, but Hank Williams Jr. is not. Son and namesake of perhaps the most beloved country singer of all time, Williams Jr. has produced a very different reflection of the bitter and belligerent political mood of heartland America. Williams’s album, “Old School, New Rules,” is an explicit rejection of the narrative of displacement and loss on view in “Cost of Livin.’ ” Instead, Williams’ hard-edged collection of 12 songs projects an unabashedly conservative message targeted directly at the 2012 election. On July 19, Williams’s album reached number four on Billboard’s country-and-western chart.

Hey, are you ready for the good news. We’re gonna take back this country. Hey, Barack pack your bags head to Chicago. Take your teleprompter with you so you’ll know where to go. So move it on over. Move it on over. Move over little dog cuz the big dog’s moving in.

The competing moods of “Cost of Livin’ and “Taking Back the Country” will influence the Nov. 6 election. “Cost of Livin’ ” has a pessimistic cast. “Taking Back the Country” relies more on naked aggression. With 62 percent of respondents believing that the country is on the wrong track, according to a recent CBS News poll, pessimism will color this year’s outcome no matter what. Americans express grave doubts about both candidates.

Voters in a fighting frame of mind – those for whom hatred of the enemy is key — are likely to gravitate to the candidate they see as more assertive. Voters moved by a promise “to help you and your family” may be drawn to the man who appears to offer compassion. Whoever succeeds in persuading those still sitting on the fence that he will stand with them in the trenches will almost certainly win the election.

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was published earlier this year.

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Weekly pieces by the Op-Ed columnists Charles Blow and Ross Douthat, as well as regular posts from contributing writers like Thomas B. Edsall and Timothy Egan. This is also the place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election. Yes, everything: the candidates, the states, the caucuses, the issues, the rules, the controversies, the primaries, the ads, the electorate, the present, the past and even the future.